Improve eyesight naturally: the Bates method
The Bates Method is probably the best known method of improving eyesight naturally, without the use of glasses. It was developed by Dr. William HD Bates MD, a leading American ophthalmologist in the early 20th century and can be found in his book Perfect Sight Without Glasses.
Dr. Bates believed that the most common eye conditions are caused by mental stress and strain on the eyes, poor visual habits developed in childhood, and glasses. In fact, he believed that glasses are responsible for the deterioration of eyesight, because they make the eye lazy and prevent it from healing itself. Refraining from the use of glasses and recovering the natural habits of sight will result in improving our sight naturally.
Tension and stress are the main factors that affect poor vision. The mind and the eyes work very closely together. The eyes see what the mind tells them to see and their function is to help the mind to understand and memorize. When the mind is relaxed, the eyes move naturally, taking in the things they see, enjoying the world and transmitting this information to the mind, in a calm and stress-free way. Relaxed eyes don’t strain to see, they just see what they can and let the mind imagine the rest. Good eyesight goes hand in hand with a good memory and a vivid imagination.
However, if the mind is unwilling or unable to understand what the eyes see, if it is blocked by stress or bored, the eyes work hard to see better. The eyes reflect and follow the movements of the mind. A mind that is tired, stressed, overworked, full of unpleasant thoughts, forced to focus on boring or annoying things, immersed in daily tasks and chores, will be reflected in eyes that move erratically and jerkily instead of flowing and flowing . A mind that is trying in vain to understand and memorize reams of information will become stagnant, reflected in fixed, tense, unmoving eyes. Eye movement is crucial to the visual process, but it has to be a smooth, relaxed movement, it has to be a movement that allows the eyes the freedom to take on the world at its own pace, the freedom to calmly track things and impart the information to the mind. .
Years of mental stress and physical strain can permanently damage the eye. The reason is that long-term physical tension around the eyes can affect the balance of the optic muscles, which are responsible for changing the shape of the eyeball to allow them to focus on different objects, distances, and angles. The most common eye conditions, such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, presbyopia or astigmatism, are caused by the weakening of the optic muscles due to tension and their consequent inability to maintain the shape of the eyeball.
Therefore, the first step in improving impaired vision is to relax the mind. The second step is to relax the eyes and restore natural viewing habits. The focus of the Bates Method is to eliminate the mental tension that underlies physical tension. All the elements of the method are simply different forms and exercises that aim at mental and visual relaxation.
The Bates Method was developed as a means to enable school-age children to better learn and memorize without straining their eyes with textbooks and blackboards. The idea was implemented in a visual chart with simple letters and shapes, which was hung in a conspicuous place at the front of the classroom and children were encouraged to look at it for a few minutes whenever they felt the need to relax. his eyes. The few schools that adopted the Bates Method saw a significant improvement in students’ ability to focus and absorb new knowledge. Unfortunately, the school board felt the method was too distracting and decided to abolish it. In fact, China is the only country that includes vision training in its curriculum.
